Gravitational Wave Astronomy

UW Seattle will be the regional host for the American Physics Society’s 2019 Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics. The event, which combines exciting lecturers, a poster presentation session, workshops, and other activities, will take place January 18-20. Applications are currently open for undergrads over the age of 18, so submit yours now if you’re interested in attending! You can expect to run into several members of the GWA research group while you’re there.

Click here for more information on the event, including sign-ups!

Jess McIver from CalTech will be giving a talk on LIGO strain data and data quality on Friday, July 27th at 3:30pm. The talk will take place in DISC 256 and is estimated to last about an hour. Stop by to learn more about LIGO’s data from this distinguished speaker!

Mikkie Musser, a Physics major undergrad, has the honor of receiving one of three of the 2nd annual Physical Sciences Division Chairs Summer Undergraduate Research Awards! Using these resources, she will be working with Dr. Key throughout the summer to study interferometry in connection with LIGO and the GWA research group. Congratulations, Mikkie!

More information on the award and Mikkie’s project can be found here.

Several GWA students presented their Senior Capstone Projects at the UWB Division of Physical Sciences Capstone Symposium on June 8th. These presentations highlighted their research in gravitational wave astronomy and marked the successful completion of their various UWB degree programs.

• Andrew Clark (Physics) – Gravitational Waves from Cosmic String Cusps and Kinks
• Jacob Hesse (Earth and Space Sciences) – Pulsar Signal Simulator
• Gogo Huang (Physics) – Detection of Noise Transients in LIGO Data with BayesWave
• Darren Hunt (Astronomy, UW Seattle) – The NANOGrav Space Publich Outreach Team
• Michael Keller (Physics) – LIGO Glitches and Machine Learning
• Connor Leupold (Physics) – Characterizing LIGO Supernova Signals
• Jojo Perkins (Physics) – Characterizing Transient Noise to Enable Detection of Gravitational Wave Signals with LIGO
• Andy Szeto (Physics) – Supporting Cosmic String Evidence through Gravitational Wave Analysis

Friday, May 18: The UW’s Undergraduate Research Symposium will feature five UWB GWA research students presenting their recent work! Darren Hunt, Brandon Iritani, Jacob Hesse, GoGo Huang, and Jojo Perkins will all be giving their poster presentations from 2:30 to 4pm. Click here for more information!

Monday, May 21: Dr. Key will be giving a talk at the Port Angeles Main Library discussing “LIGO, Black Holes, and Our New View of the Universe.” If you’re interested in getting a good overview of what it is we do in the field of GWA, this would be the perfect chance to do so! Click here for more information.

Wednesday, May 23: The UWB GWA group will host Sarah Vigeland from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee for a talk on “Optical and Radio Observations of the Binary Pulsar PSR J1640+2224.” The discussion will take place from 12-1pm in DH 256.

We hope to see you at one or more of these exciting events!

 

Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Physics Honor Society, recently welcomed several new members from the UWB community! Cheng Qian, Daniel McKnight, Dr. Erin Hill, Ernie Enkhzaya, Gogo Huang,  Jomardee Perkins, Matthew Marriott, and Tija Tippett were all officially inducted into this prestigious group on Monday, April 23.

Congratulations!

Jojo Perkins, senior at UWB and longtime member of the GWA research group, has been named a 2018 UW Bothell Founders Fellow Scholar for her work in the field of gravitational wave astronomy! Her project focuses on “Classifying Transient Noise in LIGO Data Using Detector Characterization Tools.” For more information on the scholarship and this year’s other Fellows, click here. Congratulations, Jojo!

You’re invited to a talk by Joseph Simon from Caltech on Wednesday, April 25 12-1pm in DH 256! Coffee, tea, and cookies will be provided.

“Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) are galactic-scale low-frequency (nHz – μHz) gravitational wave (GW) observatories, which aim to directly detect GWs from binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Binary SMBHs are predicted products of galaxy mergers, and are a crucial step in galaxy formation theories. Understanding the link between binary SMBHs and the gravitational radiation detected by PTAs is crucial to the community’s capability of making meaningful scientific statements using PTA observations. In this talk, I will explain how recent PTA upper limits on the gravitational radiation in the nanohertz frequency band are impacting our understanding of the binary SMBH population, and show what can be implied about galaxy evolution as PTAs gain more sensitivity.”

Representatives from the Gravitational Wave Astronomy Research Group presented to 6th-8th grade students last weekend at the UWB’s 2018 Inspire STEM Festival. Their astronomy workshop, “Messengers from a Long, Long Time Ago,” was one of many activities geared towards getting young students (particularly girls and first-generation students) excited about the possibilities of learning and working in various STEM fields. For more information about the Festival, click here!

Students and faculty from both UW and UWB took a trip down to Oregon this past weekend to attend the American Physics Society’s 2018 Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics. The APS CUWiP is an annual event gathering together female students and faculty from institutions across the country to present research, network, and share knowledge. As you can see, the UW students were not at all shy about repping their home campus at the event, and in fact UW will be hosting the gathering next year!

For more info on the event, click here.